What is "brickfielder"

Brickfielder \Brick"field`er\, n. [Australia]

1. Orig., at Sydney, a cold and violent south or southwest wind, rising suddenly, and regularly preceded by a hot wind from the north; -- now usually called southerly buster. It blew across the Brickfields, formerly so called, a district of Sydney, and carried clouds of dust into the city.

2. By confusion, a midsummer hot wind from the north.

n. (context Australia English) A hot, dry, dusty wind of southern or central Australia.

The Brickfielder is a hot and dry wind in the desert of Southern Australia that occurs in the summer season. It blows in the coastal regions of the south from the outback, where the sandy wastes, bare of vegetation in summer, are intensely heated by the sun. This hot wind blows strongly, often for several days at a time, defying all attempts to keep the dust down, and parching all vegetation. It is in one sense a healthy wind, as, being exceedingly dry and hot, it destroys many injurious germs. The northern brickfielder is almost invariably followed by a strong "southerly buster," cloudy and cool from the ocean. The two winds are due to the same cause, viz. a cyclonic system over the Australian Bight. These systems frequently extend inland as a narrow V-shaped depression (the apex northward), bringing the winds from the north on their eastern sides and from the south on their western. Hence as the narrow system passes eastward the wind suddenly changes from north to south, and the thermometer has been known to fall in twenty minutes.

The brickfielder precedes the passage of a frontal zone of a low pressure system passing by, and causes severe dust storms that often last for days and led to its naming as the winds blow up red brick dust. A more frequently used term for the winds is a "burster".